


Old Practices Die Hard

by Artistic_Fuss



Series: The Bookstore Verse [1]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Blood, Bookstore AU, Dead Body, Dissection, Gen, Hall is gay, Nika is sneaky, daud's ace, lavinia is tired of Hall, missing blood, or more no blood, they discuss the Spector Club, they're in the middle of this mess again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:42:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28366356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artistic_Fuss/pseuds/Artistic_Fuss
Summary: Lavinia is a coroner and pathologist with her work partner Will Hall, only, they have wrapped themselves up in something so much bigger than each other, or even their director. Lavinia has befriended the ex- Wolf Of Dunwall and with his help is unravelling a conspiracy.
Series: The Bookstore Verse [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2077422
Comments: 1
Kudos: 1





	Old Practices Die Hard

The pair have been given keys to the shop. Front and back. Eleanora knows they do, and she is sweet enough to keep an eye on anyone else that tries to come and go. That does include any ex-Whalers that come and go, as they have been most recently. The old connections have been coming in very handy with the topic at hand. 

Nika does not use the door. Daud had come to the conclusion, many years before, that the little magpie does not know that they exist. He is perfectly fine with that. She is small enough to sneak in through a window on the second floor. The one nearest the peach tree between the bookshop and the little family house beside it. Daud rarely knows when she has come and gone unless she comes to sit with a cup of tea. He has continued the old habit of leaving a pot boiling with her cup ready. A warm blanket is thrown over the back of what has specifically become her chair in the last weeks.

Lavinia is a very different story from Nika. It would have taken Daud a fair amount of digging to have ever found a connection between the pair. Similarities are far and few between them. Lavinia enters through the front door, every time. Daud can nearly set the clocks in the shop by her arrival. She is a reliable source of time as Mittens is when asking for food. Her cup is stained at the bottom with rings to show where tea has sat to go cold. Daud cannot remember if it is his or if she brought it with her one day. It does not matter in the end. It is resting on the rack with the rest when she arrives. 

With the influx of company, his bookstore’s little living area has filled itself with seating. There had always been Mitten’s seat, a large plush chair, and his own old leather seat he had found in a flea market. Now it was stuffed full with a couch some Whalers dragged in through the back door, a love seat and two more plush chairs. At least one seat was always full, usually, two, if Mittens decided that the guest was worthy of her company. 

Yet, no matter how many old habits Daud is picking back up. Finding the darkest corners in streets and collections of young street kids, coughing from the dust. No matter, he has yet to get to a body before the Grand Guard. A body tossed to the street does not collect attention until it has all eyes on it. And that brings the guard faster than a robbery or stabbing. They want the bodies covered and hidden. Loading them onto carts and bringing them to the labs. The moment any contact has made it to the bookstore, the body will be gone. The Whalers remain the fastest transport of information. But, Karnaca is large. Too large to travel from one side to the other before a body is gone. Too crowded to lift a body onto their shoulders and dart around. The roofs are too tall, alleys too full. Grand Guard on high alert, and too busy to transfer a body between contacts. They are all out of practice. 

But this one. This one, single body, comes in late. The guards lug it into the room and drop it on the metal table. It’s limbs shrivelled and malnourished. And Lavinia is quick. This is the first chance she has to get Daud to see any of the bodies first hand. She leaves her partner with no explanation, telling him to stay. Do not freeze the body for the morning. Take the report and wait. This remains her first and possibly only chance to have a body for Daud to see.

He looks, exasperated by her leaving him to the guards. After all, it is nearly a tie between them for who gets along the worst with the Grand Guard. They both threaten and spit hate. Lavinia pulls ahead only for her unwillingness to adhere to their thoughts of her as lesser than Dr. Hall. Despite neither having a single form of university earned doctorate between them. Or Lavinia having a much better-documented history of family, or existence. 

Nevertheless, Lavinia grabs her coat from the rack, not wasting a moment to pull off her gloves, and heads for the lab door. Leaving Hall alone to record the guards’ report.

Her luck is high that evening. The dust storms are calm, the streets are clear of the rabble, the cart comes on time. It rattles along the tracks, rusted in cracks and a dead Blood Fly lurks in one of the corners. It is good enough to get her where she is going. It has always been this car to the shop. She has seen the Blood Fly a hundred times. And she will see it a hundred more, of that she can be certain. The cart creaks, grinding its wheels on the dust-ridden track of the district. Far from the Dust District, and yet, still close enough to get hit with the dust from time to time. 

Daud once said the storms pushed dust down the walls to the coast once or twice a week. He recorded a dust storm a day one time in the Month of Harvest. He does not remember when that was, but he believes it was a year or two after he returned to Karnaca. Now he only complains when it enters his lungs and makes his throat itch. He does not remember it doing that when he was young. But then, he supposes he would not. The dust was not like this when he was young. 

Lavina can see the light on further into the shop with a shadow blocking part of a window. Wide shouldered and stocky, she knows it to be Daud. His shop door opens and closes for her and she tracks dust on to the wooden floor as she hurries to the small kitchen. Through the open doorway, under the shined whaling blade. The cloth parts as she enters, letting the light of candles and the fire enter into the bookshop. 

The large wild cat, in her seat, as usual, raised her head, purring out a loud rumble at the sight of Lavinia. As Lavinia stepped passed Mittens rolled to her back, Lavinia scritches the underside of her chin. Denying an offered cup of tea. 

Even so, with a cup in his hand and the kettle in the other, Daud can see the unrest in her eyes. 

“We have a body. You need to come. Right now! Hall has it, I’m sure he will keep it out, but when Gravewood hears that he left it out-” 

The kettle clatters back onto the top of the woodstove, and Daud swings the metal door closed. “Nika,” 

Lavinia had not even seen her sister there, curled around a warm cup of tea with a thick blanket over her. 

“Come with us. I want to know your thoughts on this body.” Daud reaches for the pair of heavy coats on hooks near the window, tossing one towards Nika. “Same as the others?”

“It looked it I’m sure. I came quicker than the guards could report it.” Lavinia is turned around back to the front door by Daud. 

He pulls his coat on, doing each button up as he does. 

“These are the ones drained of blood? They’re supposed to be drained by Blood Flies aren’t they?” Nika’s hood covers most of her head. A long hook reaching down over her face to keep her obscured. 

“That is what’s being reported.” Daud locks the shop door once they have all left. The key is slid into one of his many pockets. “We suspect there is a Void of a lot more to them than that.”

“There’s no Blood Fly larva. Or any signs of burrowing.” Lavinia exclaims, stepping back down onto the street. “We take the cart down on Millard Road.” 

“But the fastest way to the lab is the roofs,” Nika argues, slinking alongside Daud. His form and shadow blocking her from view. “We could meet you there.”

Daud shakes his head. “No, I believe we should travel together. We should not arrive before Lavinia. We can wait for her to open a window for us. There’s no need to cause suspicion by going in the front door, and I doubt Mr. Hall would give us any access if we just went up and knocked.”

“For you, he might,” Nika retorts. 

Lavinia cannot help the laugh in agreement. “He’d open his front door for him. The lab would be no big deal at all. Bring him wine and you’ve won him over.”

They pass a pair of Grand Guard with relative ease and get into the cart station. Along the cart complains all the more back to the lab, holding more weight with the extra two in its’ carriage. It is under an hour before they have come to a stop and Lavinia runs up the steps of the lab while her companions wait outside by a window. 

“Took you long enough! What are you doing? I thought you were getting something? You make me stay here with this wilted corpse as it rots!” She has barely come in through the door before she is assaulted by Hall’s words. 

“I did,” Lavinia pulls open a window and Nika slips in with Daud behind her. “I got these two.”

“These are? The two you’ve talked about? Your sister… and Daud?” He holds a cup in his hands, still steaming, and the smell of black coffee overwhelms the smell of chemicals and the body resting on the table. 

“He knows the truth?” Daud undoes the buttons of his coat and tosses it over a chair.

“He can keep secrets. Usually.” Lavinia says.

“Usually?” Hall’s voice jumps up an octave.

“Right. Occasionally.” Off comes Lavinia’s coat, thrown across an empty counter. She steps towards the body with Daud. 

He rolls the sleeves of his shirt up over his forearms and pushes them a short way up his biceps once they reach his elbows. No longer is the cup of coffee the sole holder of Hall’s attention. Daud lifts the body’s arm, fingers pressing along the wrist in an attempt to locate any blood veins. They have fallen too deeply into the body for him to find them like this. 

“Did the guards say how long they thought he was dead?” Lavinia asks Hall, noticing his staring. She grabs a tray of equipment and brings it over to Daud. 

It takes Hall a moment to answer. “They-they said hours. I don’t believe that for a minute. Like the others, there’s no fucking way he was only dead for a couple of hours.” Hall throws a hand towards the body, stepping closer. He grabs one of the arms and pulls it up. “I mean! You don’t look like this if you’re dead for two hours! Not even with Blood Flies! He’d be bloated if it was Blood Flies!” The arm hits the table again as Hall drops it.

“Did you check the body at all?” Daud looks across the table at Hall. 

“No, Lavinia said to wait. She’s been wanting you to look at some of the bodies over.” 

“The others have already been sent to be burnt. Or we would pull them out too.” Lavinia chimes in, heading off to one side, she pours herself a coffee. “We are not allowed to keep them for long. We’ll get in trouble just for keeping this one in the open for so long.”

“We’ve been told to just agree with the guards and move on. And that! It is next to impossible! Blood Flies!” Hall exclaims, almost knocking over his coffee seconds after having set it down. 

Lavinia nods, coming back to the table just as Daud makes a large slit up one of the arms. Pressing in deep enough that he can pull it apart to reach the veins. The body does not bleed, and the veins are shrivelled and thin. “Lavinia’s mentioned needle marks? Where are they usually.”

“Neck. Elbow joint. Found one under the arm once. That was on a larger cadaver.” Hall picks up the opposite arm again to look for the telltale mark. 

Lavinia checks the neck. “They’re too small for Blood Flies. Even if it is just a bite and not a laying site. Even if it was a laying site. We’ve never found eggs. Or larva.”

“They’re all like this.” Hall shakes his head, not finding a mark on the arm he is searching on. “I can’t even think of how you would do this.”

“Isn’t there a reporter that knows about these? He was around pressing for information.” Nika is sitting on one of the counters behind Daud. She makes it clear that she is talking to Daud and no one else. 

“Yes… He was making some big claims.” Daud pauses, pushing the veins back into the arm. He looks over his shoulder to Nika. “Do you know where he is?”

“Upper Cyria. Near the bank?” She nods.

“Cristopher?” Hall asks, looking up at the two. He can almost not see Nika from his place in front of Daud, and she will not even look in his direction. “He’s tried to drop by.”

“You didn’t let him in?” There is snark in Nika’s voice, looking at Hall from the corner of her eye.

“Not his type.” Lavinia shoots back, matching her sister’s reply. 

“Hey! I- I don’t just let people in because I like them!” Hall looks a little red in the cheeks. 

“Enough.” Everyone goes quiet when Daud tells them to. “Nika, do you think you can get to him? See what he knows. Take anyone you think will help. Or do it alone. But I want everything you can find. Maybe take Fergus or someone that can sweet talk.” 

“Now?” 

“It’s late, he may be more willing to talk.” Daud nods. Moving up the cadaver’s neck as Lavinia points out the in prick needle mark. “Do you have any needles that fit?”

“We haven’t really tried,” Lavinia admits. They had not thought of that. “We guessed that it was a mark of a blood transfusion.”

“This is more visible than a usual needle mark. Bring me one of each that you have.” Daud presses against the skin near the pinprick. He trusts them, but he does need to be certain that this body is not different from the others. “Do you have a sketch artist or photographer for the bodies?”

“No. The Grand Guard only sends photographers for particularly suspicious deaths.” Hall says.

“And they consider these Blood Fly related... Of course. Do you know if these bodies have been added to the Blood Fly victim count?” Daud takes a needle from Lavinia. Easing it into the skin to compare the marks. 

“We have been told to. But, we have all the paperwork. We should be able to find which ones fit this case more. Shouldn’t we?” Lavinia looks at Hall, getting a shrug in reply. 

“I don’t put the papers away.” 

Daud and Lavinia roll their eyes. “Do either of you have access to the files?” Daud pushes further.

“We both do.” Lavinia nods, pulling up a chair to watch Daud work with the body. “We can get them for you.”

“When you come by tomorrow, bring as many as you are able to find. Copies, or the original. Copies would be preferred. We can’t have the originals marked as missing.” Daud’s voice grows low as he focuses on the needle marks. Nodding to himself. “It is a transfusion needle. Someone is draining them of blood…” He looks up, turning to talk to Nika. And finds her gone. No one had seen her leave. No one heard the window open or shut, but she is gone. Already headed across the rooftops to fetch another Whaler. It is not unusual for Nika to take control of the situation herself and do what needs to be done without being asked, or commanded, and it makes Daud smile a little. 

Hall looks intoxicated by the smile and does not snap back into focus even as Daud turns back to talk to him and Lavinia.

Daud notices the longing look in Hall’s eyes, and barely hides a glare in his eyes as they pass from Hall to Lavinia as she looks intently at him as he talks. A notebook seemingly having been pulled from thin air for her to copy notes. “Any information you, either of you,” His voice snaps, deepening almost to a command that shocks Hall from his mind wanderings. “Can get your hands on will be of use. Any record of bodies without blood, whether it was Blood Flies or not. All the better if one or both of you were in the presence of the body and can remember it…” 

The three stay in the lab that night, remaining awake only by will, spite, and caffeine, respectively. There is nothing left of the body when they are done. When Daud has had his fill of tearing it tendon from tendon and peering into the darkest reaches of the bones. They are bloodless. With a normal body, Hall would be bloodied up to his elbows, but he only has a spill of coffee on the corner of his coat. Any blood that had been found within the body was in such small amounts it dried to the metal table beneath the cadaver. If anyone were to enter the room with the three still there, it would look as if supernatural creatures, creatures of the Void, had been at the body. Leaving it without a drop of blood, cleaning the marrow from bones and tore its muscle and skin to pieces.

The water for their coffee boils over the rim as the harsh Karnaca sun shatters the drifting darkness that had come over the rooms as the candles went out one by one. The darkness is not the only thing shattered as the sun comes. Their peace and quiet does too. 

The main doors of the building fly open and from down the hall comes the sounds of heeled shoes. Click, clack, click, clack. Gravewood. Hall lurches out of his three fourths asleep state, scrambling for his coat, pulling it on backwards. Lavinia finds her coffee cup in a stack of papers and rushes over to pour herself a fresh cup as the kettle screams. And the window opens and closes as Daud blows through like the wind. A gust of air unseen, simply felt. 

Gravewood pushes the door to the pair’s shared lab open, to find them both. Bags under their eyes, and steaming cups of coffee. The lab a sight to see. A complete and utter mess that she has no words to properly express to them. 

“You left the body out?” Gravewood steps in, steps towards Hall as he pulls one side of his coat closed. She towers over him.

The sunsets, not long before the dust storm down in Daud’s district, and Lavinia’s rail car rattling down the rails. When she opens the dusk swirls in, being disrupted by her steps as she walks in. A stack of papers hugged to her chest under her long coat. Her hair is a Blood Fly’s nest and the bags under her eyes could make someone believe she was a Nest Keeper if they did not know her. 

The familiar space that is Daud’s kitchen is full. That is unfamiliar. In two of the chairs sit who Lavinia can only guess had been Whalers once upon a time, with Nika in another, and Mittens curled in hers. Daud stands to the side tending a pot of strong-smelling stew. Spicy and meaty. Something filling. 

Lavinia sets the papers down near the board full of pins and papers. Thread winding things together and ink crossing out other pieces. There are new papers there, new faces. And a scratchy symbol. She takes a moment to study them. She has seen the symbol before. Very rarely. Only when she had agreed to tag along with Hall to some unusual gathering. The place was of no interest, nor were the people, but Hall had insisted she come. 

“You need it to be admitted into the Spector Club.” The voice is scratchy, almost like it had drawn out the symbol. Lavinia turns to see it is one of the Whalers. “We gathered a good handful of information last night.” She continues. “Thanks to you bringing Daud to see that body.” 

“Nika contacted Cristopher. And he had a bounty of information.” Daud taps Lavina softly and hands her a bowl of stew. It is warm in her hands. “We have connections, finally.” His voice is full of relief. They have had a breakthrough, After so long. It is a relief. They have been digging through this case, these cases for so long. 

“Good, because Hall and I found nothing we didn’t already know.” Lavinia turns her shoulders in on herself some as she stirs the stew. It smells even stronger this close. 

“So get this,” the red-haired Whaler starts. “Ivan is just as fucking sketchy as you’d think. The guy’s drinking blood.” The Whaler talks with his hands mostly, gesturing around with motions that do not match up to what he is saying. 

“He’s been calling it a Sanguine Solution. It keeps people young.” The rough voiced woman adds. “He gets it from the Spector’s Club.”

That is when Lavinia notices the glass bottle holding red sludgy liquid sitting on the table. Thankfully, the stew Daud has given her is nothing near that colour or it may have turned her stomach. 

“You should take it back to your lab. See if there is anything you can find in it. I have a hard time believing it is straight blood.” Daud sits down against Mitten’s chair, resting himself on the armrest. He reaches back to pet the big cat’s head and she begins to rumble. Her head raising from her paws, pushing her weight into his hand. 

“So, we’ve found where the bloodless bodies come from… haven’t we?” Lavinia thinks the meat in the stew is shark meat. She does not know how Daud got it to taste so good, usually, it is more coarse and on the unpleasant side. 

“We’re more curious about how they get the bodies in and out. Without being noticed.” The woman continues. “We should watch them for a couple more nights at the least.”

Daud nods. “Going into this blind will do us no good. We might get in even deeper if we do that.” He looks to Nika, nearly asleep in her chair. Her cup of tea has long cooled. “Nika, I want you to take a copy of the tattoo to Mindy.”

“We’re getting the Howlers involved?” The Whaler jumps in. Confused and a touch upset. Her hands gripping the armrests as she leans her body forward.

“No. No. Mindy is able to tattoo, she has good machines. I trust her to give the tattoo.” Daud watches Nika as she lazily nods her head. She may be half asleep still, and that is okay. He can always talk to her later. “That is not me saying we are all going to get the tattoo. But it may be worth a couple of us getting it to be able to get in. Seeing things from the inside would be beneficial to our investigation. And Mindy can give it. But I am not asking any of you to be marked.” 

The group falls quiet between drinking cups of tea and bowls of stew. The fire spitters as the dark grows, but no one minds as embers dance through the grating out towards them. Flickering out on old worn boots of the Whalers and reflecting through Mittens’ eyes as she stares out into the dark.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for my friend Fiene and our Bookstore verse of Dishonoured where Daud runs a little bookstore and gets pulled back into politics because of a too curious coroner and her interest in what is really happening in the world around her.


End file.
